March 24: The Evil of the Daleks Episodes 1 & 2

We end up with a direct cliffhanger from The Faceless Ones -- the TARDIS was stolen at the end of last episode, and now we're investigating with the Doctor and Jamie as to its whereabouts.  They're given a set of clues to follow, but it turns out the clues are being deliberately planted; whoever stole the TARDIS is banking on the Doctor's cleverness.

The identity of that person is ultimately one Edward Waterfield, who seems to be going out of his way to demonstrate that he's not from around here: he has no knowledge of contemporary slang and generally has the manner of an awkward Victorian gentleman.  He's also supplying what appear to be excellent replicas of Victoriana, which seem to come from a strange machine in his back room -- which is where he speaks to his unseen and unheard bosses.  Gee, I wonder who they'll turn out to be?

The Doctor successfully follows the trail of breadcrumbs left for him and meets up with Waterfield's assistant Perry, who lets him know that Mr. Waterfield would like to meet with him at 10 pm.  Meanwhile, Waterfield's hired goon Kennedy goes snooping, and comes face to eyestalk with a Dalek...

Episode 2 is yet another one that exists as the result of a return from a private collection (and thus gives hope that there are other episodes out there from stories with only a few prints struck -- The Evil of the Daleks appears to have only had three copies made for international sales, yet one of the episodes managed to survive), and so we can see what's going on.  This means we see Kennedy's extermination at the top of the episode, and we see the Doctor and Jamie fall into the trap that Waterfield has laid.  The rest of the episode takes a bit of a turn, as we move from Chelsea 1966 to outside Canterbury 1866 and the home of Theodore Maxtible.  It seems he and Waterfield were conducting experiments with mirrors and electricity; when they tried static electricity, they attracted the attention of the Daleks, who have forced the two to work for them in trapping the Doctor.  The Daleks are being quite devious here; they've kidnapped Waterfield's daughter Victoria in order to get his cooperation, and they seem to have some sort of hold over Maxtible as well.  Maxtible surmises that the Daleks want to isolate the Human Factor, to work out what it is that humans have that allows them to defeat the Daleks and then use that knowledge against them.  And it seems that they want Jamie to be the test subject to help isolate that factor.  Only it seems that someone has kidnapped Jamie...

These two episodes are a bit pacy, but they're also effective in setting up the mood of the piece.  There's a sense of danger even before the Daleks make their appearance, with a few bits of mystery added in to help keep things interesting.  It's a good start -- we'll have to see what happens next...